"What have you done?" She surprised herself, not knowing what she was going to say.

Lindsey stood taller than usual, her eyes bright and wide, aroused, with the pupils tiny. Lips parted as though she'd been running. A stranger, unsettling to Sandy, as if some other person had shrugged into Lindsey's skin. Sandy stepped back again.

"He was crying."

"Yes. He was, wasn't he. Don't worry about it," Lindsey said. "It's quite all right. Take my word for it. In the long run it won't matter."

The remembered hurt in the man's face and the memory of his sob tightened Sandy's stomach.

"Was that necessary?" Sandy asked.

"Yes." Lindsey glanced down. "He broke his word. Broke his promise to me."

"Are you sure?"

"Sandy, come in," Lindsey said. "Oroko, you need not join us."

With the heavy door closed Lindsey faced Sandy.

"I only want to say this once, Sandy," she said. "Don't ever question me again."

Sandy didn't answer. To do so would be to either fight or give agreement and she could do neither. She studied Lindsey, holding the dismay and shocking distrust she felt inside, then turned and opened the door.

She nearly ran into Oroko, as if he stood too close to the door not to eavesdrop-as if he felt it wrong that he'd not been in that room with her. She glanced up into his large black eyes and she could imagine worry. She didn't pause.

Fresh air. She needed fresh air. She'd go on that delayed field expedition she'd planned for next month. The weather wasn't great, but tough shit. She'd be out of Lagos day after tomorrow, up among the boulders on the plateau in two days after that, out in the wind and sun and scrub breathing free among colors bleached with sun, and the wilderness would erase that man's ruined face in its childlike sorrow.

Chapter 35: Wilton.

March 1968 Owerri Area, Biafra This slope hadn't enough cover for a dog, much less a human adult however undersized. Down in the rank weeds that tangled over the red clay slope, Wilton moved inches at a time, taking long pauses. Her spotted and drabbled clothing and pack gave a degree of camouflage. She headed diagonally across the slope, toward a rise in grass and tangled vines that indicated the slumped red mud of a house destroyed. Potential cover.

She stilled, feeling a wrongness before she caught the glint of binoculars. A hand among the thick green tree leaves. The hand was tanned, with a strip of near white at the wrist. Someone, a white man, watched her from a perch in a cashew tree by the ruined house. Used to be someone's front yard at a guess.

Good choice of tree, big pendant leaves heavy as leather, strong wide branches covered with smooth bark. She hadn't seen him until a half a minute ago, wondered now why he hadn't fired. The skin chilled between her shoulder blades. Predator, a white predator. Maybe it made him cocky. Maybe he liked to spin things out. Maybe he could tell already she wasn't Nigerian or Biafran and was curious. Too many maybes. She only knew for certain that she should keep on. God willing, it was her best chance.

She moved erratically, never in a straight line, and always when the wind shifted the vegetation. Would she have done better to make a dash? Maybe, if he hadn't been watching. He could pick her off any time, or she would have rushed it.

But he was taking his time, she guessed. So long as he took his time she'd take hers.

Wilton should have known better than to attempt this slope, but she knew the lower road was closed. She'd ducked fire when she cut to the South. This was the only way for her to reach Gilman behind Biafran lines, and Gilman was right now the only refuge she could think of in all of this shattered shaking world. The shelling had made her slightly deaf in her left ear. It bothered her now more even than the man in the tree, who hadn't killed her yet.

Like a wounded animal she let herself sink into the partial cover of the shattered cassava leaves. No crop this year. Suddenly so tired-time to end this game. Wilton lifted her head.

She looked up straight through the leaves. She stared into his eyes over the thirty feet that lay between them. How does one know when you meet another's eyes? She felt it. She stared and her eyes stung.

With slow deliberation, she got to her feet, dusted off her knees, shrugged like a high-school girl back home caught running off to play hooky. American body language was her best bet.

She stood and waited. He dropped down out of the tree, but she didn't use that brief moment when he hit ground to make a break. She'd have been a fool to do it. He could have winged her so fast she wouldn't have made two steps. When he beckoned her, she walked straight upslope to him.

He was young for a mercenary, late thirties at a guess, and American. Her luck still held, thank God.

"Not another fool newspaper reporter?" he said. "Keep your hands on your head."

"Not today." She watched him examine her, a flickering wary glance. She carried nothing but the bundle strapped to her back.

He poked the bundle, flipped open the top, probed. Paper, binoculars, clothing. Paints.

"Where'd you think you were going?"

"Biafra. I'm Kate Wilton, here to see your Dr. Gilman. Dr. Katherine Gilman."

"Yeah."

"I didn't know if the Feds held this ground." She moved in response to the gesture of his Schmeisser to walk in front of him, as if they both had danced this dance many times before. There was agreement in the sound of his grunt. The lines could change in a day or night, even looping like a wounded snake, cutting compatriots off from support.

"Coming up that slope was a fool's trick," he said.

"Not much choice. The Feds hold the bush over there."

She didn't make the mistake of moving her hands but instead indicated the direction she meant with the turn of her head and eyes.

A few paces then three of his men shifted out of the high grass as though he'd called them. They saluted. Nice. He must be good. The man on the right held his machine gun balanced and easy.

"Major Jantor, sah."

"Take over my post," he said. "I want to check this one out. Obika you come with me-keep an eye on her while I drive."

He took her to a hidden Jeep. They jarred over the rough track for perhaps a quarter hour before reaching another group of men and vehicles. He transferred Wilton to another truck, one headed back to base with wounded, then swung up to join her in the back of the open bed.

"I can help," she said, "if you let me get my hands down."

He nodded and watched her check wounds. Wilton tightened a binding on one man's arm, checking to make sure his hand still had a pulse-that she hadn't overdone it. She didn't like the look of the man lying rolled in a tarp and placed the quick back of hand to his sweaty forehead to check for fever. But there was nothing to do for him. The truck lurched and Wilton balanced, moving over to the third man.

"You a medic?" the American asked. "We could use you."

"Amateur compared to Gilman," she said. He was too good looking and he knew who Gilman was. Wilton could draw lines between points. She knew Gilman was a romantic. You'd think being a doctor would take that out of a person.

"Nurse?"

"No."

"What then?"

"A birder."

"You're joking."

"No, cross my heart and hope to die," she said.

He laughed.

Outside the hospital the mercenary swung down and offered Wilton a hand, which she ignored, hopping down like one of her birds. She pulled her bundle of belongings after her by the strap.

He gestured. "Go ahead. I can see Doc's in the office."

He followed Wilton and she knew he wanted to see how she was received, to make sure Gilman recognized her.

"Doctor, you have guests," Gilman's nurse said.

"Dr. Gilman." Wilton tried to suggest she and the doctor were on formal terms. She stood to one side of the door acting unsure of her reception.

But Gilman's head jerked up, her pen skittering across the page of notes. Her startled attention went first to the Major, then to Wilton.

"What the...Wilton? Thank God. Thought we'd never see you again."

The mercenary nodded, sketched a joking salute and started back to the truck.

"I've been having kittens over you," Gilman said. "Where in hell you been?"

Wilton saw the mercenary twist his head back as if he wanted to eavesdrop. Then he moved on and she took a deep breath.

"I used to think that Lindsey did everything for effect."

"So you think better now," Wilton said. She sat in Gilman's small office on a rickety metal chair. Through the screen door she could watch the sun go down. Like thunder, Kipling said, as abrupt as that. No, she had it backwards-Kipling had written "where the sun comes up like thunder...." The other half of the sun.

Gilman was finally free of work, the two of them drinking gin and water alone together. There was the fragrance of cooking on the air. Garri and hot sauce with palm oil. No smell of meat or beans. Carbohydrates only.

"Yeah, now I know everything she does is for effect."

"Gilman, what am I to do with you?"

"Oh, I'm not jealous, Wilton. You always think I am. Bugs the hell outa me and always has. Nope, I'm sorry for her, don't you know. Sandy's the only thing keeps her human. Back in our Wellesley days, you ever listen to the girls in the dorm talk about Lindsey?"

Wilton said nothing, knowing her friend was about to go offensive, but Gilman grinned and looked around the shadowy room as if to make sure no one else listened.

"Talked about her like a rock star, movie star, making up all sorts of romantic legends. They'd take any scrap of information that floated their way from the hero's past. Tragic hero. Can you imagine anything less tragic than Lindsey?"

"You said you felt sorry for her." Was it worth reminding Gilman of that?

"Shit yeah, but not like that. Not romantic-impaired. Isolated, fearfully controlled. A constipated personality. Wouldn't know what to do with a good red-blooded emotion-except for ambition. If that's an emotion. I used to think she liked babies, that she had that much of human vulnerability. Now I know better. She doesn't even like babies except in the abstract. She'll donate to an orphanage, but never change a diaper."

"You change diapers?"

"Shut up, Wilton."

"You were saying?"

Gilman laughed, embarrassed perhaps. But the jealousy came through to Wilton. She distanced herself. This was no time to get angry with Gilman. The doctor had to feel lonely here even with Sister Catherine sharing quarters.

"Childhood canings by cruel nuns, murdered parents, even a myth about Lindsey as a baby abandoned on the church step on a cold winter's night. Believe you me, that's the kind of stuff they used to whisper."

"You never thought there might be a truth buried behind those fragments?"

"Sure, maybe. Well I know she lost her parents as a teen. But nothing so outrageous special to make her different from the rest of us. We're the expatriates who don't go home. We're all the same, even you with your high calling and your fantasies of power that bend us to your will. Don't think I'm blind to what you do, Wilton."

"I never think that."

"But sometimes the trap snaps tighter when the victim walks in wide eyed." Gilman said.

"Oh yes." Wilton laughed, and her heart lightened at the comment.

"So what do you think of our mercenary contingent?"

The sound of Gilman's voice was too casual, and Wilton wished they'd lit a candle so she could see Gilman's face.

"I've only met the one who decided not to shoot me," she said, focused on every inflection and the stir of Gilman's body in her chair behind the desk.

Was it possible to stop Gilman? Probably hopeless and Wilton would alienate her friend as well as the merc. But mercenaries didn't last long. They left or they died.

"It doesn't matter," she said to Gilman. "Tell me more about the types of diseases you're getting here. Did you see the usual dry season outbreak of cerebrospinal meningitis, or did the refugee situation change family habits enough to break transmission patterns?"

Christopher met up with Wilton in the early morning. He spoke with her on the bush path by the hospital where the trees and vines gave good cover. Wilton heard about Thomas Jantor.

"He says to Masters, that South African mercenary Major, 'Doesn't matter about intentions or good feeling. You can get a knife in the gut or a knee in the balls all the same if you don't know the language.'"

Christopher's mimicry was good and made Wilton want to smile.

"His men fear him, but they're proud. They say he cannot be shot. He knows about women. He leaves wives and girlfriends alone. He goes with good-time girls but only two, three, so far."

Wilton guessed Jantor knew the old laws without any translation needed. While the troops wanted to know he was a man, they didn't want him too distracted or taking women from other men, soldiers or civilians. That would get men killed. So a white woman would be better than a black and that meant Gilman was at risk.

Maybe Jantor understood more than was safe. Wilton needed to figure him out, because he already knew more about her than she wanted. She hated the thought that he had watched her on that slope. He would know she had done that kind of work before and her cover about the birds would not convince.

But he'd be easy to take out, between translation problems and the natural suspicions of any leader of a rebellion like Ojukwu. The stakes of betrayal paid so high, and a mercenary was for hire, so planting doubt should be easy. The least suspicion that Jantor was bankrolled by the wrong people and Ojukwu would conclude he was a traitor. She must consider, wait and watch. She saw a smooth motion in the powdery soil and leaves by Christopher's toes.

"Be still," she said.

Christopher's body and even his eyes fixed. He didn't question. Wilton took up a stick and pressed down the end across the neck of the little brown snake that paused close by his bare foot. It tried to slither free. Before it became angry, she plucked it up. The tail wrapped swiftly about her wrist. A somewhat stumpy shape, lovely in a camouflage chevron pattern copying broken and moldering leaves. A night adder, back fanged, sluggish, but still poisonous in spite of its size.

"What the hell are you doing, woman?" Jantor's voice broke in on them.

"Not deadly," she said, though it wasn't true and Christopher knew it. "I'm moving it so no one gets frightened. It's not big enough to eat."